The Tudor Polity and the Pilgrimage of Grace

TheBlackwellOxford,HISRHistorical0950-3471©XXXOriginal Institute Tudor UKArticle ResearchPublishing, polityof Historical and the Ltd. Research pilgrimage 2005Tudor of grace polity and the pilgrimage of grace M. L. Bush Manchester Metropolitan University

Abstract A striking feature of the pilgrimage of grace was its concern for lost or threatened rights and liberties. This article considers the light that this throws on the revolt itself and on early Tudor attitudes towards state and society. It examines the nature of the pilgrims’ constitutional concerns and their relationship with the law, the manorial system, the society of orders and the concept of the body politic. It questions the view that the constitution was not in contention at this time by analyzing the concept of tyranny that the pilgrims used. It also suggests that society’s general acceptance of the manor and the society of orders did not necessarily result in social cohesion and harmony because commons and gentlemen were inclined to place conflicting interpretations upon the differential rights and obligations that they warranted. It finally proposes that, in spite of being sanctioned by reference to tradition, the rights claimed were far from static but could undergo revision and renovation.

Research on the northern uprisings of 1536, collectively known as the pilgrimage of grace, has tended in recent years either to ignore the participants’ constitutional grievances or to dismiss them as unimportant.1 Yet the rebels were acutely conscious of a corpus of rights and liberties that they felt to be threatened, on the one hand, by a reformist

1 The only systematic treatment of the constitutional grievances appeared long ago, and inadequately, in M. H. Dodds and R. Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536–7, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538 (2 vols., Cambridge, 1915), i. 355–63. This was dismissed by G. R. Elton (see his ‘Politics and the pilgrimage of grace’, in After the Reformation: Essays in Honour of J. H. Hexter, ed. B. Malament (Manchester, 1980), pp. 25–56, at pp. 41–52). A. G. Dickens’s attempt to secularize the uprising caused him to note the constitutional issue of supremacy but to present it as unimportant (see his ‘Secular and religious motivation in the pilgrimage of grace’, in Studies in Church History, iv, ed. G. J. Cuming (Leiden, 1967), pp. 39–64, at pp. 59–60). C. S. L. Davies’s view that religion and spoliation interlocked as the moving force behind the uprising led him to overlook or to play down the grievances framed in constitutional terms (see his ‘Popular religion and the pilgrimage of grace’, in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. A. J. Fletcher and J. Stevenson (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 58–91). Christopher Haigh followed the same path in English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), pp. 143ff; as did John Guy in his Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), p. 151; as R. W. Hoyle appears to do in The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford, 2001), ch. 1, esp. pp. 12–13, which dismisses the Dodds for liberally stressing the charge of tyranny. In the epilogue Hoyle asserts that ‘throughout the Pilgrimage there was a conviction that government was out of control’ (p. 451), yet in the rest of the book this issue and its constitutional implications receive scant consideration.

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48 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace government ruthlessly run by heretical parvenus and, on the other, by selfish landlords bent on increasing their rentals, no matter what the cost to community and country. The importance of the constitutional complaint to the pilgrim rebels is evident in the two petitions that they addressed to Henry VIII. The so-called First Five Articles were submitted on 27 October. Of the four grievances specified, three raised constitutional issues: article two demanded the maintenance of the church’s liberties; article three called for the common law to revert to the practice of 1509; and article four required the punishment of named ministers of the crown for subverting the law. The second petition was submitted on 4 December. Its twenty-four articles were intended to furnish with detail the broad categories of grievance declared in the October petition.2 Constitutional complaints were again to the fore, with fifteen of its twenty-two articles of grievance accusing the government of constitutional irregularity. Eleven did so explicitly, focusing on the rights of the church and the clergy (articles two, eighteen and nineteen); misconduct by officials (articles eight, eleven, twenty-two, twenty-three and twenty-four) and the misuse of parliament (articles twelve, sixteen and twenty-one). Another four made a constitutional complaint through implying that the government had exceeded its authority by acting improperly. They included article three which demanded the legitimization of Princess Mary; article five which demanded the termination of first fruits and tenths; article fourteen which called for the discharge of the lay taxes granted in 1534; and article twenty which required the repeal of the Act of Uses.3 Yet the fault did not simply lie with the government. As the December petition made clear, in articles nine and thirteen, the peasants of the upland north complained of the greed of landlords and their contempt for the rights of tenants which, although not recognized by common law, were, they believed, sanctioned by custom. If these rights were destroyed, they claimed, the security of the state would be threatened since the resulting impoverishment of the far northern peasantry would prevent them from fulfilling their military obligations to the crown for the defence of the border against Scotland. For this reason, the people of

2 For the October petition, see The National Archives of the U.K.: Public Record Office, SP 1/109 fo. 245, briefly summarized in Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, xi, no. 902(2). For the Dec. petition, see L. & P., xi, no. 1246. There is a tendency to dismiss these petitions as useless statements of what the pilgrims wanted, on the grounds that they were simply a ploy to disarm the commons (see Hoyle, Pilgrimage, p. 21). However, even if this was the purpose, it would stand to reason that the content should seek to appeal to the commons by reflecting what they wanted. This article rests on the belief that the grievances set out in the two petitions addressed to the king were a genuine statement of the pilgrims’ complaints, if far from being a complete listing of the grievances held. 3 For Mary, see M. Bateson, ‘The pilgrimage of grace, and Aske’s examination’, Eng. Hist. Rev., v (1890), 330–45, 550–73, at p. 562; L. & P., xi, no. 1182(3). For the first fruits and tenths, see M. L. Bush, ‘“Enhancements and importunate charges”: an analysis of the tax complaints of October 1536’, Albion, xxii (1990), 403–19, at pp. 411–12; for the subsidy, see Bush, ‘Enhan- cements’, p. 405. The Act of Uses was articulated as a constitutional grievance by the Lincolnshire rebels, from whom the pilgrims adopted this complaint (see Bush, ‘Enhancements’, p. 415).

The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 49 the north needed to make a stand in defence of their rights not only against a tyrannical government but also against improving landlords.4 The constitutional grievances expressed in the two petitions are confirmed, clarified and expanded upon in a great deal of other evidence: the rebel proclamations produced in October 1536; the pilgrims’ oath that Robert Aske composed in York and attached to the First Five Articles when this petition was submitted to the king; Aske’s order for religious houses; the statements produced by Aske in connection with the taking of Pontefract castle; the narrative of the uprising that Aske composed in December 1536 for the benefit of Henry VIII; the answers given by rebel leaders and other eye-witnesses under government interrogation; rebel songs, notably the Sawley ballad and the one composed by Friar Pickering; and several declarations of grievance composed to assist the pilgrim leadership in the task of drawing up the December petition. Of the latter, one was probably by Sir Robert Constable, another probably by the West Riding gentleman lawyer Robert Chaloner, three were petitions from the commons and yet another was ‘the opinion’ drawn up by the pilgrim clergy on 4 December.5 From this substantial body of evidence, the pilgrims’ constitutional complaint can be comprehensively understood. Overall, they claimed that the government was guilty of tyranny: first, because it had treated with

4 For reference to this system in the pilgrimage of grace documentation, see L. & P., xi, nos. 892(3), 1246; L. & P., xii. i, no. 914 (p. 415); R. W. Hoyle and A. J. L. Winchester, ‘A lost source for the risings of 1536 in north-west England’, Eng. Hist. Rev., cxviii (2003), 120–9, at p. 127 (doc. 3). The system is explored in A. J. L. Winchester, The Harvest of the Hills: Rural Life in Northern England and the Scottish Borders, 1400–1700 (Edinburgh, 2000), chs. 2, 5; and in M. L. Bush, ‘Tenant right under the Tudors: a revision revised’, Bull. John Rylands Libr., lxxvii (1995), 161–88. 5 For Aske’s proclamations, see T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/107 fo. 116 (L. & P., xi, no. 622); State Papers: King Henry VIII (11 vols., 1830–52), i. 466–7 (L. & P., xi, no. 705(2)). For other rebel proclamations, see L. & P., xi, no. 892(1 [1 and 2], 2, 3); L. & P., xii. i, no. 163; T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/117 fos. 55–55b (L. & P., xii. i, no. 687(2)); Hoyle and Winchester, pp. 128–9 (doc. 8). For Aske’s oath and his order for religious houses, see L. & P., xii, nos. 705(4), 784(ii). For Aske’s declarations at Pontefract, see Bateson, pp. 335–6; S.P. Hen. VIII, i. 486–7 (L. & P., xi, no. 826). For Aske’s narrative, see Bateson, pp. 331–43. For Aske’s examinations, see Bateson, pp. 557–73 (11 Apr.); and L. & P., xii. i, no. 1175 (11 May). For other revealing confessions and statements made under examination, see L. & P., xi, nos. 842 (William Breyar), 879(ii) (Harry Sais); L. & P., xii. i, nos. 29 (Marmaduke Neville), 201 and 370 (John Hallom), 369 (George Lumley), 392 (Brian Stapulton), 393 (Thomas Percy), 532–3 (Francis Bigod), 687 (Barnard Townley and Robert Thompson), 786 – 9 (John Dakyn), 914 ( William Collyns), 1011 ( James Rokeby), 1014 (Nicholas Tempest), 1021 (John Pickering), 1022 (Edward Lee), 1034 (Stephen Hamerton). For the Sawley ballad, see Bateson, pp. 344–5. For Pickering’s song, see T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/118 fos. 292ff (L. & P., xii. i, no.1021(5)). For advice offered to Pontefract council, see L. & P., xi, nos. 1182(2) (Chaloner?), 1244 (Constable?). The Dodds attributed document L. & P., xi, no. 1244 to Sir Thomas Tempest of Holmside (Dodd and Dodd, i. 357–8). However, it is not in his hand (compare with L. & P., xi, no. 1211), and the belligerent sentiments contained therein, proposing the removal of Cromwell as a pre-condition of any settlement and raising the prospect of battle, are far removed from Tempest’s, and closer to those of Sir Robert Constable who, like the author of the statement, was virulently anti-Cromwell and wished him dead (see L. & P., xii. i, no. 891). Constable also opposed the second appointment and appeared to favour a military solution (see L. & P., xii. i, nos. 392 (pp. 193–4), 466). For clerical opinion, see L. & P., xi, no. 1245. For petitions from commons, see L. & P., xi, nos. 1080, 1182 (1, 3).

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50 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace contempt the orders (or estates) of society, that is, the royal family, the gentlemen, the clergy and the commons; second, because it had ignored certain customary procedures thought vital to the proper functioning of parliament; third, because it had interfered with local and regional government in a manner contrary to tradition; and finally, because it had made laws and followed practices that offended the constitution by favouring the crown at the expense of realm and church. In this respect, the pilgrims were charging the government not only with supporting heresy and satisfying its own greed but also with trampling on the rights and liberties of subjects as defined by the law of God, laudable custom, the beliefs attendant upon the society of orders and what was considered natural to the body politic. The consequence was presented in horrendous terms. As Aske expressed it in a proclamation: the defeat of the pilgrimage would ‘put both us and you and your heirs and ours in bondage for ever’.6 The charge of tyranny was not levelled explicitly at the king, but at his leading minister, Thomas Cromwell, who was presented in Pickering’s song as a ‘southern Turk’ bent on ‘subverting our laws and spoiling Christ’s church’.7 The case made against him was that, having been born a commoner, he could not possibly know how to govern the state; and that, because he was a layman, he could not possibly know how to oversee the church. Yet, as lord privy seal and vicegerent in spirituals, he was in charge of both. The pilgrims accused him of transgressing the constitution: first, by managing parliament in such a way as to pass improper laws; second, by showing contempt for the rights and liberties of the clerical estate; third, by misusing the machinery of equity – exercised through the royal prerogative and vested in the conciliar courts and the authority of the lord chancellor – to commit injustice; and fourth, by planning to maximize the royal revenues through reforming the tax system. By means of such measures and plans Cromwell was charged with leading the king astray, causing him to break his coronation oath. Yet, while the blame was attached to Cromwell, and remedy was principally seen as achievable through establishing direct communication with a misled king, the implication of the pilgrims’ complaint was that Henry VIII had erred and needed to be put right. According to Aske, the pilgrims’ central objection was to a number of recently made statutes, especially those relating to the succession, the supreme headship of the church, treason, clerical taxation, uses and the suppression of the lesser monasteries.8 In addition, as the December petition made clear, several other statutes aroused complaint: notably for

6 S.P. Hen. VIII, i. 467 (L. & P., xi, no. 705(2)). 7 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/118 fo. 292 (L. & P., XII. i, no. 1021(5)). 8 Bateson, p. 559. For the succession, see 25 Hen. VIII, c. 22; 28 Hen. VIII, c. 7. For the supreme head, see 26 Hen. VIII, c. 1; 28 Hen. VIII, c. 1. For clerical taxes, see 26 Hen. VIII, c. 3. For treason, see 26 Hen. VIII, c. 13. For uses, see 27 Hen. VIII, c. 10. For suppression, see 27 Hen. VIII, c. 28.

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 51 curtailing benefit of clergy and sanctuary, for granting an unusual subsidy and fifteenth and tenth, and for restricting the usage of crossbows and handguns.9 All these statutes had been enacted between 1534 and 1536. Finding statutes to be at fault, the pilgrims were obliged to demand parliamentary remedy; hence their desire, as stated in article fifteen of the December petition, for a parliament at York. Its purpose was partly to repeal the offending statutes but also to extend the scope of statute so as to protect certain customs. Thus, article nine of the December petition, the one dealing with the custom of tenant right, wanted the terms of tenure that the rebels had already forced upon local landlords to be given confirmation by act of parliament; article nineteen required something similar, in demanding statutory sanction for the customs traditionally enjoyed by the ecclesiastical liberties.10 This complaint against recent statutes argued that for a variety of reasons – such as offending God’s law, going against traditional practice and breaching laudable custom, all at the expense of the faith and the commonweal – they were culpably unconstitutional.11 On the face of it, this would appear questionable since all had received parliamentary assent. The pilgrims, however, claimed that the government had behaved unconstitutionally in forcing these statutes through parliament, partly by packing the Commons, partly by altering procedure in the Lords. Both charges were made in article twelve of the December petition which required ‘reformation for the election of knights of shire and burgesses’ and that ‘uses among the lords’ be ‘after the ancient custom’. What this actually meant was clarified in two statements of grievance submitted to the pilgrims’ council at Pontefract in December. One appeared to come from Robert Chaloner; the other, from Sir Robert Constable. The ‘Chaloner statement’ complained that those elected to the last parliament (the sixth parliament summoned in June 1536) had been nominated: that is, they ‘were named in the king’s letters’. It proceeded to complain that a great number of burgesses in the Commons did not reside in their constituencies. It also objected that the custom of disallowing the king’s servants from sitting in the Lower House was nowadays ignored. The same statement protested against by-elections – an innovation of Thomas Cromwell – which were seen as another device for creating placemen. In making this point, it revealed that the packing charge applied not only to the very short sixth parliament but also to the very long fifth parliament (the so-called Reformation Parliament) which first sat in 1529 and was dissolved in April 1536.12

9 L. & P., xii, no. 1246, articles 10, 14, 18. The three statutes are 28 Hen. VIII, c. 1; 25 Hen. VIII, c. 17; 26 Hen. VIII, c. 19. 10 L. & P., xi, no. 1246. 11 Bateson, pp. 561–5, 570; L. & P., xi, nos. 1182(3), 1245. 12 L. & P., xi, no. 1246; L. & P., xi, no. 1182(2), articles 14–17. For evidence to suggest that Chaloner was the compiler, see Bateson, p. 570; but another distinct possibility is Robert Aske.

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The complaint against parliamentary packing featured in the ‘Constable statement’ as well. It declared that, in view of their composition, these parliaments were more aptly termed ‘councils of the king’s appointment’. Members of parliament, according to the ‘Constable statement’, should represent their constituencies and protect their interests. If they were nominees of the crown, this was ruled out. The same statement concluded that, when packed in this way, parliaments were ‘of neither authority nor virtue’: that is to say, whatever they enacted was bound to be illicit.13 Substantiating this point, under examination in April 1537, Aske declared, in response to a question on the pilgrim attitude to parliament, that when the pilgrims had first assembled at Pontefract in October 1536 ‘generally it was thought divers acts at the last parliament [were] passed by favour’.14 Convinced that the government had abused the constitution by manipulating elections to the Commons, the pilgrims not only required a special parliament to be convoked at York in order to provide remedy but also insisted that it should be ‘free and frank’. Accordingly, Aske instructed the king in December to proclaim his willingness to grant northerners ‘free election of knights and burgesses’ and to allow members of parliament to speak freely without incurring his displeasure.15 The complaint made in article twelve against procedural alterations in the Lords was elaborated upon by Lord Darcy, another member of the pilgrim high command, although he was not too well qualified to know, for, having stopped attending parliament in 1534, he had missed the last three sessions of the Reformation Parliament as well as the sixth parliament of the reign. Darcy believed that the government had seriously breached custom when it ceased to allow the Lords sight of any bill touching the royal prerogative before its formal presentation, thus denying them the chance to consult learned counsel in advance on whether the bill was detrimental to crown or commonweal. He had other worries about alterations in parliamentary procedure that applied to parliament as a whole, including the abandonment, in the sixth parliament, of the traditional practice of starting with an affirmation of the first chapter of Magna Carta, which specifically upheld the rights and liberties of the church. Another matter of some anxiety to him was the fact that questions of faith were now legislated upon in parliament rather than in convocation.16 Related to the pilgrims’ parliamentary concerns was their commitment to another representative assembly. As with parliament, the pilgrims required a free and frank convocation: this came to light in Aske’s

13 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112 fo. 114 (L. & P., xi, no. 1244). For its attribution to Constable, see above, n. 5. 14 Bateson, p. 569. 15 Bateson, p. 343. 16 Bateson, p. 568.

December instruction to the king, and was declared in plans to hold a York convocation coincidentally with the York parliament. True, convocation had authorized the royal supremacy, the Ten Articles and the abrogation of holy days, but allegedly only under governmental pressure.17 This comprised, however, only part of the complaint. The pilgrims also blamed the government for failing to consult the northern convocation specifically over the granting of new clerical taxes in 1534. Thus, the opinion of the pilgrim clergy – drawn up in Pontefract, but too late to be incorporated in the December petition which was submitted before the opinion was completed – declared that ‘the clergy of the north parts’ had not ‘consented to the payment of the tenths or first fruits of benefices in the convocation’.18 The same grievance was reflected in article five of the December petition which demanded the termination of tenths and first fruits, albeit with the concession ‘unless the clergy will of themselves grant a rent charge in generality to the augmentation of the crown’; that is, unless convocation was given a decisive say in the matter.19 The ‘Constable statement’ extended the issue of representation to the privy council itself. Complaining that ‘whatsoever Cromwell sayeth is right and none but that’, it sought to show that this seriously impaired the workings of the council.20 The pilgrims demanded the reconstitution of the council’s membership on several occasions, principally to free it of heretics and ‘the subverters of the good laws of the realm’.21 They also objected to its domination by new men, who, as parvenus, were seen as naturally intent on self-promotion and enrichment, preferring a membership drawn from nobles of ancient lineage, who were thought to be, by virtue of their blood, naturally blessed with a sense of public duty.22 In response to this objection, the king had claimed that it was his prerogative to determine the membership of the council and therefore that subjects had no right to tell him whom to appoint.23 The ‘Constable statement’ rejoined that if the council became simply ‘a council for his person at his pleasure’ a counter-balance was required in the form of a ‘council for the commonwealth’ comprised of ‘such virtuous men as would regard the commonwealth above the prince’s love’. If this could not be achieved, it argued, the king’s subjects had a right of resistance

17 For Aske’s statement, see Bateson, p. 343. For the York convocation plan, see L. & P., xii. i, no. 45. For the role of convocation in authorizing Reform, see S. E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament, 1529–36 (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 202, 214; and S. E. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 1536–47 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 37–9. 18 L. & P., xi, no. 1245; Bateson, p. 563. 19 L. & P., xi, no. 1246. 20 L. & P., xi, no. 1244. 21 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112 fo. 119 (L. & P., xi, no. 1246, article 8). 22 L. & P., xi, no. 705(1, 2, 4); L. & P., xi, no. 826 (p. 319); T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/109 fo. 245 (L. & P., xi, no. 902(2)); L. & P., xi, no. 1059(ii). 23 S.P. Hen. VIII, i. 498.

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 54 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace that was justified by scripture and the reigns of Edward II and Richard II. Witness the ‘jeopardy he [Edward II] was in for Piers de Gaveston, Spenser and such like councillors’; and was not Richard II ‘deposed for following the counsel of such like’?24 When the king’s interest was placed before that of the realm, it licensed evil ministers to act tyrannically. This was the general import of the ‘Constable statement’. Not only was Cromwell accused of pushing bad laws through parliament but also of appropriating and misusing the king’s right to dispense justice, thus causing the king to break his coronation oath and commit perjury.25 As specified by the pilgrims, the injustice committed was the result partly of unwarranted government interference with the common law and partly of the inequitable use of the subpoena to summon northerners to London to make answer in a court of equity. The objection to government interference found general expression in article three of the October petition which ordered ‘that the common laws and the commonwealth of this realm may be used as it hath been used since time of the beginning of his highness’ reign when his nobles did order under his highness’. This was made more specific in articles twenty-two and twenty-three of the December petition, which criticized the government’s misuse of two instruments of equitable jurisdiction, the injunction and the subpoena: the former for not being properly processed, the latter for denying northerners an exclusive right of trial in York.26 The same grievance was very much a concern of the ‘Chaloner statement’ which extended the complaint to letters of privy seal. It demanded that all three instruments (injunctions, subpoenas and privy seals) ‘be not granted so commonly . . . as of late time they have’, nor ‘specially for such small or feigned causes’, nor ‘unto countries and shires far distant from London’.27 At the centre of the complaint was Cromwell, who since 1534 had been master of the rolls and then in July 1536 became lord privy seal. Aske also blamed the lord chancellor ‘for so general granting of injunctions and for playing of ambi-dexter [that is, being open to bribes] in granting and dissolving of injunctions’.28 The ‘Constable statement’ blamed Cromwell and his servants who ‘think to have the law in every place ordered at their commandment’ and consequently ‘command sheriffs [and] justices of peace, coram and of session in their master’s name at their pleasure’.29 In Pickering’s song Cromwell was

24 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112 fo. 114 (L. & P., xi, no. 1244). 25 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112 fo. 114v. 26 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/109 fo. 245 (L. & P., xi, no. 902(2)); L. & P., xi, no. 1246. 27 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112, p. IV, article 7 (L. & P., xi, no. 1182(2)). 28 For the involvement of the master of the rolls and the lord chancellor in the issuing of injunctions, see W. J. Jones, The Elizabethan Court of Chancery (Oxford, 1967), p. 184. For Aske’s remark, see Bateson, p. 343. 29 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112 fo. 114b (L. & P., xi, no. 1244).

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 55 branded a tyrant because of his use of ‘false injunctions’, a charge reflected in article twenty-two of the December petition which required ‘all injunctions [to be] clearly determined’ and ‘not to be granted unless the matter be heard and determined in the chancery’.30 Two legal cases, both of them belonging to 1536, were cited by the pilgrims as evidence of the government’s illegitimate intrusiveness. In May the government ordered an arraignment jury in York to withdraw an acquittal in a murder trial and to find the defendant, William Wycliffe, guilty. For refusing to comply, the jurors were subpoenaed to appear before star chamber in London and heavily fined.31 The other cited case concerned George Dakyn, a servant of Cromwell’s nephew. Indicted on a charge of murder, he was about to be tried at York in August when Thomas Cromwell ordered his release.32 The ‘Constable statement’ cited this case as proof that Cromwell and his agents required everything to be done ‘at their pleasure, be their matter never so false’.33 A third case may well also have been in some pilgrims’ minds, in view of the demand featured in article eighteen of the December petition which required ‘sanctuary to save a man’ according to laws used in 1509.34 The case concerned a breach of the protection of St. Cuthbert. Several servants of Sir Francis Bigod had taken refuge in Durham cathedral to escape prosecution for murder. However, an injunction from the lord chancellor had ordered their removal from this sanctuary, and they were awaiting trial at York just as the pilgrimage of grace broke out.35 A fourth case of government intervention had riled the inhabitants of Beverley, who were the first in Yorkshire to provide military support for the pilgrimage of grace. It concerned Cromwell’s involvement in a dispute between them and the lord of the manor of Beverley, the archbishop of York, over elections to office in the town, and offered yet another instance of northerners being summoned to London to appear before a court of equity. A star chamber decree found in favour of the archbishop and two injunctions were issued to prevent the defendants from pursuing the matter further.36 Yet another instance of Cromwellian intervention concerned a star chamber action brought in late 1535 by John Lambert against the tenants of Airton in Craven who had attacked his new enclosures in defence of their commoning rights. Cromwell intervened in Lambert’s favour by writing a supportive letter to the earl of Cumberland who, although a victim of related riots and therefore incapable of impartiality,

30 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/118 fo. 293 (L. & P., xii. i, no. 1021(5)); T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112 fo. 121 (L. & P., xi, no. 1246). 31 Bateson, p. 340; L. & P., viii, no. 457 (misdated); L. & P., x, no. 1257(xii). 32 L. & P., xi, no. 237; L. & P., xii. i, no. 788. 33 L. & P., xi, no. 1244 (p. 505). 34 L. & P., xi, no. 1246. 35 See A. G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509–58 (1959), pp. 88–9. 36 See M. L. Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace (Manchester, 1996), pp. 50–3.

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 56 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace was allowed to head the commission appointed to hear and determine the case.37 The pilgrims’ complaint against the irregular behaviour of officials was not confined to Westminster. Article eleven of the December petition complained of the bribes taken by the commissioners for the dissolution of monasteries in the north, notably Thomas Leigh and Richard Layton, when deciding which religious houses should be dissolved; while article twenty-four focused on the improper conduct of county escheators in administering the king’s feudal rights. They were charged, on the one hand, with seeking to extend feudal obligations to lands traditionally held in socage; and, on the other, with allowing bribes to influence their decision as to whether land was held in capite and therefore feudally liable. Article twenty-four not only blamed escheators but also ‘the promoters thereof’, suggesting that the former’s attempts to enlarge the extent of land held of the king in knight’s fee were authorized by the government and, in fact, formed part of a plan, centred on the Act of Uses, for increasing the king’s feudal revenue.38 A theme running through the pilgrims’ complaints was the suspicion that the government sought to sweep away rights that offered protection against extortionate taxation. The ‘Constable statement’ attributed these designs to Cromwell on the grounds that he had been heard to say that ‘he shall make the king the richest prince in Christendom’, warning that ‘a man can have no more of the cat but the skin: that is to say, the king can have no more of us than we have’.39 For a variety of reasons, then, Cromwell – the king’s principal secretary, master of the rolls and lord privy seal – was regarded and detested as a tyrant. Linked with him, as was made clear in article eight of the December petition, were Thomas Audley, who as lord chancellor had proved too permissive and corrupt in issuing injunctions, and Richard Riche, who until 1536 had served as solicitor-general and then became chancellor of the court of augmentations. All three were branded subverters of good laws as well as maintainers of heresy.40 Nevertheless, as Aske admitted under examination, ‘the commons never blamed [some councillors] but took them for honourable and good catholic men and willers of the commonwealth’.41 Besides publicly identifying the tyrants, the pilgrims proposed the means to end their misrule. This involved dismissing them from office, thus releasing the king from their bad influence so that he could

37 See M. Bush and D. Bownes, The Defeat of the Pilgrimage of Grace: a Study of the Post- Pardon Revolts of December 1536 to March 1537 and their Effect (Hull, 1999), pp. 165–6. 38 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112 fo. 121 (L. & P., xi, no. 1246). The issue is elaborated upon in the ‘Chaloner statement’ (see T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112, pp. v, vi (L. & P., xi, no. 1182(2))). 39 L. & P., xi, no. 1244. 40 L. & P., xi, no. 1246. 41 Bateson, p. 571.

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 57 rediscover his natural goodness as a ruler; summoning a parliament and convocation that would be ‘free and frank’ (that is, beyond government control and able to express its reservations without fear); and a return to the legal practices of 1509. As the ‘Chaloner statement’ suggested – article three of the October petition and article twenty-two of the December petition made the same point – ‘the common law may be used as it was in the beginning of the king’s most noble reign’.42 This third solution suggests that the pilgrims saw the misuse of the common law as pre- dating the Cromwellian regime and therefore the work of another minister of low birth, Thomas Wolsey. How valid was the charge of tyranny? The pilgrims had good reasons for thinking that the polity was undergoing radical change, endangering in the process traditional rights and liberties. Extensions of the royal prerogative had recently occurred, notably in connection with the king’s assumption of absolute supremacy over the clergy and the church, and its delegation to Cromwell as vicegerent in spirituals. Several statutes, moreover, had enlarged the royal authority. Some had conferred upon it the powers of jurisdiction and exaction formerly exercised by the pope. The Treasons Act of 1534 had extended the grounds of treason to the spoken word.43 The Succession Act of 1536 allowed the king, in the absence of direct heirs, to override the law of God, as it declared itself through the blood and the principle of primogeniture, and bequeath the crown to anyone he liked – thus raising the spectre of Cromwell as the next king.44 The Franchises Act of 1536 had restored all liberties to the crown, depriving their former owners of the right to pardon major crimes, to appoint public officers and to issue writs in their own name.45 The Act of Uses of 1536 had swept custom aside, allowing the king to exercise to the full his feudal prerogative in matters of wardship and relief and to deny tenants-in-chief the right of bequest.46 The fiscal statutes of 1534 departed from the convention that direct taxation should only finance war by proceeding to tax the laity in peacetime and by imposing upon the clergy a regular annual tax exactable in perpetuity.47 In addition, the measures to reduce the rights and liberties of the church were all, as the ‘Chaloner statement’ indicated, in contravention of Magna Carta; and the government’s use of injunctions, both to interfere with the common law and to breach the independence of the permanent sanctuaries, was

42 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112, p. iv, article 7 (L. & P., xi, no. 1182(2)); L. & P., xi, no. 902(2); L. & P., xi, no. 1246. 43 24 Hen. VIII, c. 12; 25 Hen. VIII, c. 20; 25 Hen. VIII, c. 21. For the Treasons Act, see G. R. Elton, Policy and Police: the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), ch. 6. 44 28 Hen. VIII, c. 7; L. & P., xii. i, no. 533. 45 27 Hen. VIII, c. 24. 46 27 Hen. VIII, c. 10. 47 26 Hen. VIII, c. 19; 26 Hen. VIII, c. 3. For the pilgrims’ interpretation of these acts, see above, n. 3.

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 58 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace highly irregular.48 True, injunctions had been a source of complaint long before the fifteen-thirties: common lawyers had criticized their usage, partly for stopping further litigation in cases already settled by the equity courts and partly for imposing the principle of equity upon the courts of common law. Behind their criticism was envy of the equity courts’ success in attracting judicial business away from the courts of common law, and responsible for it was not so much objection to tyranny as rivalry between two systems of litigation.49 In contrast, the pilgrims’ complaint against injunctions rested upon a charge of government wilfulness. As for the pilgrims’ protest against being summoned to London by subpoena, this raised two issues, both of them stemming from reforms initiated by Wolsey. The first concerned the summons to London of allegedly corrupt sheriffs and J.P.s in order to answer for their misdeeds before the council. This practice was widely used by Wolsey from 1516 and continued by Cromwell.50 The second concerned the injustice of summoning poor men all the way to London to answer bills brought against them in the courts of equity. In order to redress the matter, Wolsey had established a council of the north in 1526.51 The pilgrims certainly had no objection to this particular reform. In fact, their demand that subpoenas should be personally answered by northerners at York (in article twenty-three of the December petition) was an attempt to revive it after it had lapsed thanks to the ability of petitioners to resume cases at Westminster that the council of the north had already settled by decree.52 The pilgrims’ complaint against tyranny specifically related to the way in which subpoenas were used to dispense correction to local officials. Under Cromwell and Audley, they argued, the summons to London by subpoena had degenerated into a device for pressuring subjects to comply with the government’s wishes rather than a means of justly administering the law. In this respect, it had achieved the exact opposite of Wolsey’s intention. This became evident in the Wycliffe case, the records of which have conveniently survived in king’s bench. The pilgrims’ charge was true: a jury was summoned to London, hauled before star chamber and fined, simply for refusing to alter its verdict.53 Furthermore, the charge of parliamentary packing was given substance by Cromwell’s use of by-elections to improve his control of the Reformation Parliament and by his plans to create placemen in the sixth

48 For the breach of Magna Carta, see L. & P., xi, no. 1182(2), article 6. 49 J. A. Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More (Brighton, 1980), pp. 84, 86. 50 J. A. Guy, The Cardinal’s Court: the Impact of Thomas Wolsey in Star Chamber (Hassocks, 1977), pp. 56–7, 61; J. Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 172–3. 51 P. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal: the Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (1990), p. 115. 52 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp. 47–8. 53 T.N.A.: P.R.O., KB 9/976 mm. 129–32. For an examination of the evidence, see Bush, Pilgrimage, pp. 166–7.

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 59 parliament.54 Much of this attempted manipulation was understandable. After all, the elections to the Reformation Parliament had long preceded Cromwell’s rise to power; and the sixth parliament of June 1536 offered a golden opportunity to improve his control of the Commons. Because Cromwell needed to secure parliamentary sanction for a string of highly contentious matters, it was not surprising that he should seek to make the Lower House more manageable. Nonetheless, the way he set about it, coupled with his obvious motive for doing so, aroused justifiable suspicion in the realm. Thus, although tyranny was undoubtedly an overstatement, a great deal of constitutional infringement had taken place, affecting laudable customs, legal rights and juridical privileges, and thereby creating offence. At fault was not despotic design – after all, most of these infringements enhanced the constitutional role of parliament – but attempts to achieve reform within the existing polity.55

Robert Aske in his various public declarations – notably his first proclamation and the oath that he composed in York – appeared keen to show that constitutional grievances, not necessarily the same ones, moved all three orders of society.56 Constitutionally, the clergy were undoubtedly disturbed by the government’s maltreatment of convocation, by its attacks on sanctuary and benefit of clergy, and by its subjection of the spirituality to a layman. Thus, convocation was consulted neither over the introduction of first fruits and tenths in 1534 nor over the First Royal Injunctions of August 1536 which, in elaborating upon the Ten Articles, added a great deal of heretical matter to the religious settlement. Convocation then found its world completely upturned in 1536 when its proceedings were placed under the direction of a layman with the highly provocative title of vicegerent in spirituals.57 As for the ecclesiastical sanctuaries, the protection of forty days traditionally offered by parish churches to fugitives from the law ended in 1529 when it was enacted that the period of immunity should now be determined by the local coroner. In reaction, article eighteen of the pilgrims’ December petition required a man to be saved by ‘the church for forty days and further’ in accordance with the law on Henry VIII’s accession.58 In addition, the act of 1529 severely limited the protection offered by the permanent ecclesiastical sanctuaries, for it denied felons and murderers in flight from the law access to them, leaving them with no

54 Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, pp. 3–7; J. Loach, Parliament under the Tudors (Oxford, 1991), pp. 26–7, 33, 36, 75. 55 The same point is illustrated by the purpose behind the Statute of Proclamations (see M. L. Bush, ‘The act of proclamations: a reinterpretation’, American Jour. Legal Hist., xxvii (1983), 33–53). 56 For the proclamation, see T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/107 fo. 116 (L. & P., xi, no. 622). For the oath, see Correspondence of Edward, 3rd Earl of Derby, ed. T. N. Toller (Chetham Society, new ser., xix, 1890), pp. 50–1. 57 Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, pp. 213–14, 217–18; Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, p. 37. 58 21 Hen. VIII, c. 2; T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112 fo. 120 (L. & P., xi, no. 1246).

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 60 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace other option than to go into foreign exile. True, this was undone in 1531, but only with effect until the next parliament. In the meantime, sanctuary of any sort was denied to all traitors and their abettors in 1534, as it was to servants robbing their masters in 1536. Cromwell’s parliamentary notes for 1536 mentioned ‘specially to speak of utter destruction of sanctuaries’ and outlined his resolve to get rid of liberties, ‘specially the franchise of spirituality’. The Franchise Act of that year (27 Henry VIII, c. 24) must have undermined ecclesiastic sanctuaries such as that of Durham by taking away the holder’s right to pardon or remit treason, murder, manslaughter and felony, generating the news circulated in March 1536 that sanctuary would no longer avail for debt, murder or felony. Although the sixth parliament of June 1536 surprisingly renewed the act of 1531, the ecclesiastical sanctuaries were clearly teetering on the brink of extinction. This was proven four years later when they were extinguished by statute.59 The measures taken against sanctuary in the period 1529–36, and the expectations and fears that they aroused, underlay the claim in article eighteen of the December petition for ‘sanctuary to save a man for all causes in extreme need’.60 Benefit of clergy underwent a major setback in 1536. Earlier in the reign, the privilege had been curtailed when parliamentary statutes had reduced the numbers entitled to enjoy it, as well as the range of crimes to which it applied. Thus, in 1512, for murderers and felons, the right of trial in ecclesiastical courts – and therefore their immunity from the death sentence – was confined to major orders, that is, to clerics of at least subdeacon status.61 A papal bull had come to the rescue of the minor orders in 1514 by exempting all criminous clerks from temporal punishment. Its effect was to ensure that the 1512 act, originally a short- term, parliament-to-parliament measure, was not renewed in 1515.62 But it was revived in 1532, again temporarily, continued by statute in 1536 and made perpetual in 1540.63 The act of 1536, moreover, did more than continue the 1532 act, since it laid down that even the clergy who kept their benefit – that is those in major orders – should suffer ‘the same

59 22 Hen. VIII, c. 14; 26 Hen. VIII, c. 13; 27 Hen. VIII, c. 17; 28 Hen. VIII, c. 1; 32 Hen. VIII, c. 12. For rumours of curtailment, see L. & P., xi, no. 462. For Cromwell’s antipathy to ecclesiastical sanctuaries, see L. & P., xi, no. 254. In 1540 the ecclesiastical sanctuaries were replaced in the north by secular sanctuaries in York and Manchester, but with a much more restricted authority, lacking, for example, the power to protect murderers and felons. For the ambiguous impact of the legal abolition of franchises upon the principality of Durham, see C. Kitching, ‘The Durham palatinate and the courts of Westminster under the Tudors’, in The Last Principality: Politics, Religion and Society in the Bishopric of Durham, 1494–1660, ed. D. Marcombe (Nottingham, 1987), pp. 49–70, at pp. 49–50. 60 L. & P., xi, no. 1246. 61 4 Hen. VIII, c. 2; J. G. Bellamy, Criminal Law and Society in Late Medieval and Tudor England (Gloucester, 1984), p. 141. 62 Bellamy, pp. 132–7. 63 23 Hen. VIII, c. 1; 28 Hen. VIII, c. 1; 32 Hen. VIII, c. 3.

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 61 pains’ as the laity, a clause preserved forever in 1540.64 Accompanying this encroachment on clerical privilege, further legislation disallowed benefit of clergy for certain capital crimes: notably sodomy in 1534 (renewed in 1536) and servants robbing their masters in 1536.65 In response to this attack on benefit of clergy, article eighteen of the December petition demanded that a priest was ‘not to suffer by sword unless he be disgraced, a man to be saved by his book’; and the pilgrim clergy assembled at Pontefract in December opined that ‘We think no clerk ought to be put to death without degradation by the laws of the church’. In other words, unless formally defrocked, clerics should not suffer capital punishment, no matter what their crime.66 The gentlemen pilgrims had several constitutional reasons for feeling aggrieved. In 1536 the Act of Uses had swept away the licence traditionally allowed them to avoid the payment of feudal dues. Avoidance had resided in the law’s recognition that land could be owned by a trust (that is, the use) which through co-option could become self-perpetuating. By ensuring that the legal owner of a knight’s fee never expired, the use freed the real owner from liability to the feudal payments due to the king upon a feoffee’s death. All this ended in 1536 when it was enacted that, notwithstanding the existence of a use, the mortal feoffee should remain the legal owner. A side effect of this new legislation was the denial to owners of knight’s fees of their traditional means of circumventing the rule of primogeniture: the use had enabled them to bequeath property to younger sons. Associated with the issue of feudal right in the minds of pilgrim gentlemen was also the misbehaviour of county escheators in redefining socage land as feudal tenure, thus rendering it subject to the service and fiscal obligations that the latter owed the crown.67 The pilgrim gentlemen were also aggrieved, as we have seen, by the government’s interference with the work of gentlemen jurors and officials. A further constitutional concern was the government’s apparent contempt for the society of orders: evident in the elevation of Thomas Cromwell, a commoner-born, to the peerage the previous July, and in recent attacks on northern noble families, especially Lord Dacre of the North and the Percy family: the former was deprived of office and saved from extinction only by a favourable judgment of his peers; the latter was in imminent prospect of losing its patrimony to the crown as the result of a deal done between the deranged, childless earl of Northumberland

64 Bellamy, pp. 144–5. 65 25 Hen. VIII, c. 6 and 28 Hen. VIII, c. 6; 27 Hen. VIII, c. 17. 66 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/112 fo. 120 (L. & P., xi, no. 1246); British Library, Cotton MS. Cleopatra E. V. fo. 413 (L. & P., xi, no. 1245). 67 27 Hen. VIII, c. 10. For the impact of the act on landownership, see J. M. W. Bean, The Decline of English Feudalism 1215–1540 (Manchester, 1968), pp. 6, 8–11. For its impact upon the rebellion, see Bush, ‘Enhancements’, pp. 415–18. For escheators, see above, n. 38.

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 62 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace and Cromwell.68 Again as mentioned above, the pilgrim gentlemen were troubled by the government’s aggressive parliamentary management, which appeared to undermine the principle of consent. Finally, they were concerned about the peacetime subsidy enacted in 1534 and still undergoing collection in 1536: a remarkably light levy but an unusual one that implied a sinister design to make direct taxation responsible for financing everyday government, rather than simply the emergency of war, thereby raising the prospect of regular and heavier taxation in the future. The subsidy was collected in two annual instalments, and the government’s decision in 1536 to conduct a fresh assessment of taxable wealth for the second instalment must have seemed a trick to catch out those who had contrived an underassessment of their wealth the previous year.69 The large number of pilgrim captains from gentry backgrounds who worked as professional lawyers – for example, Robert Aske, Brian Stapulton, Robert Bowes, Thomas Tempest, William Babthorpe, Robert Chaloner and Thomas Gryce – must have intensified concern about rights and their infringement, as well as playing a part in their identification and elaboration. Constitutional concerns were not confined to the gentlemen and clergy: the commons were also moved by grievances relating to lost or threatened rights, notably the rumoured prospect of a range of new indirect taxes which would fall upon those who were normally exempted from government taxation either because of residence in the border counties or by virtue of poverty. Anxiety on this matter, incited by seditious bills circulating in the north, was vividly declared to Lancaster Herald who, on his way to Pontefract, encountered ‘certain companies of the said rebels being common people of the husbandry’. When he asked them why they had taken up arms, they said ‘it was for the commonwealth’, elaborating that ‘if they did not so the commonty [that is, commonalty] and the church should be destroyed’. This was because of the introduction of new taxes on weddings, births, burials and cattle ‘which had never been seen [before]’.70 The constitutional anxieties of the commons also extended to landholding customs: these related to the

68 For concern about treatment of the nobility in general, see L. & P., xi, no. 622; S.P. Hen. VIII, i. 467 (L. & P., xi, no. 705(2)); L. & P., xi, no. 705(4); L. & P., xi, no. 826. For concern over the treatment of individual families, see R. W. Hoyle, ‘Thomas Master’s narrative of the pilgrimage of grace’, Northern Hist., xxi (1985), 53–79, at p. 64; L. & P., xii. i, no. 393; M. Bush, Durham and the Pilgrimage of Grace (Durham, 2000), pp. 22–4. 69 See Bush, ‘Enhancements’, pp. 404–8. For suggestions of a reassessment plan, see L. & P., xi, no. 470; L. & P., xii. i, no. 1070. It appeared to arise from Cromwell’s suspicion of ‘deceit of the king in his subsidy’ in connection with the levy of 1535, and from his concern for ‘the true assessing of the subsidy’ in connection with the levy of 1536 (see L. & P., x, no. 254). For the nature and deficiencies of the 1534 act, particularly in the sections laying down procedure of assessment, see R. S. Schofield, ‘Parliamentary lay taxation 1489–1547’ (unpublished University of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1963), p. 215 and n. 156. 70 Bush, ‘Enhancements’, pp. 408–10. See the remarks made by commoners to Lancaster Herald (S.P. Hen. VIII, i. 485 (L. & P., xi, no. 826)).

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 63 tenurial and commoning rights enjoyed by customary tenants and now felt to be under threat, as landlords sought to replace fixed by revisable rents and dues and to deny free grazing rights on wasteland by using enclosures to create new farms or rented pastures. The commons’ concern for threatened custom also applied to the payment of tithes, which customarily had been commuted to a fixed sum of money but were now being converted back to payments in kind by tithe-farmers wishing to benefit from a long-term rise in the price of grain.71 Furthermore, although the high tax threshold and low rate – £20 in goods and sixpence in the pound – made the current subsidy extremely light, associated with it were a number of worrying novelties, notably the removal of the rebate for poverty from the fifteenth and tenth that had been granted at the same time; the breaching of the convention of confining direct taxation to a state of war; and the attempt in October 1536 to base the subsidy on a fresh assessment of wealth, even though an assessment had taken place a year before, thus giving birth to the rumour that false declarations of wealth would be punished by a confiscation of goods and chattels. These innovations represented an enlargement of the rights of the crown which the commons had good cause to interpret as a curtailment of their own.72 Commoners, moreover, may well have objected, along with the gentlemen, to the government policy of converting socage into feudal tenures, since conversion would render the freeholders among them liable to the dues associated with knight’s fees. The commons also seemed as determined as the gentlemen and clergy to keep the political system framed within the notion of the society of orders. Their struggle was to preserve not simply their own order but also the clergy and chivalry, with the differential rights and duties of the three orders intact. They revealed themselves to be as hostile as the gentlemen to the elevation of men of base blood and just as keen that the king should rule with and through the nobility. In early November 1536 it was reported that when a band of commoners who had been assigned to ‘mind’ Lord Darcy at Temple Hirst were informed that Cromwell was no longer at court and that the king was attended by nobles of ancient lineage, they cried ‘God save the king and them all’, reasoning that ‘as long as such noblemen of the true noble blood may reign and rule about the king, all shall be well’. In the same month, at an assembly in York to determine how to deal with the government, the commons prioritized their demands, claiming that first of all they wanted a general pardon, then an assurance ‘the nobility here to rule’, then a consideration of their other grievances.73 Although critical of tithes, they appeared to think that

71 For the application of the custom to tithes, see Bush, Pilgrimage, pp. 257–8, 341–2. 72 For rumours of the confiscation of goods for false declarations of wealth, see L. & P., xi, nos. 567, 768(2). For the fresh assessment, see above, n. 69. 73 See Dodd and Dodd, i. 290; T.N.A.: P.R.O., E 36/122 fos. 65r–v (L. & P., xi, no. 1128).

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 64 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace the clergy deserved their wealth and privileges because without them their capacity to care for souls and to dispense hospitality and charity would be impaired.74 For these reasons, an upturning of the society of orders through a rising of the commons was regarded by them not as a revolutionary coup but as a temporary re-arrangement, an expedient to be taken in an emergency, a device to be used until the higher orders recovered their lapsed capacity to perform the traditional function of resisting tyrannical government. Echoing the gentlemanly remark in the ‘Constable statement’ that, misled by Cromwell, the king had broken his coronation oath, the men of Dent, incensed by the fear that their parish church would be dissolved, threatened not only to ‘crum’ Cromwell but also to ‘new crown the king if they had him’: in other words they would make him take his coronation oath afresh.75 Although much of this constitutional complaint was associated with Robert Aske, it was by no means his creation. Nor was it confined to any one strand of revolt or to any one group of rebels. Men of law undoubtedly helped to identify and express these grievances but they did not invent them. A loss of rights, of one sort or another, was at the time a prevalent complaint throughout much of the north. Independently of Aske, a huge uprising broke out in Richmondshire, Durham and Cleveland. Moved by constitutional concerns, it demanded a return to what was in operation at the start of the reign; it called for the repeal of the Succession Act that allowed Henry VIII to will his successor rather than abide by the law of descent; it objected to the Act of Uses; it deplored the Wycliffe case as an act of contempt against the common law; and it was alarmed by the rumours of new taxes on cattle, foodstuffs and sacraments. It was also, in all likelihood, concerned about the sanctuary of Durham and its recent infringement.76 Equally removed from Aske’s influence were several revolts in Cumberland, Westmorland, north Lancashire and the north-westerly parts of the West Riding: all of them inspired by Captain Poverty and, in this respect, related to the Richmondshire uprising.77

74 See M. L. Bush, ‘The risings of the commons in England, 1381–1549’, in Orders and Hierarchies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, ed. J. Denton (1999), pp. 109–125, at pp. 120–1. 75 Bush, ‘Risings’, pp. 113, 117–19. For the coronation oath, see L. & P., xi, no. 1244; T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/109 fo. 38 (L. & P., xi, no. 841). 76 For return in legal practice to the start of reign, see T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/117 fo. 207 (L. & P., xii. i, no. 786(ii)); SP 1/118 fo. 256v (L. & P., xii. i, no. 1011). For opposition by participants to various statutes recently enacted, see L. & P., xi, no. 1319; Bateson, ‘Notes’, pp. 559–60, 570. For fear of new taxes, see L. & P., xii. i, no. 369; T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/118 fo. 256v (L. & P., xii. i, no. 1011). For concern over Durham sanctuary, see Bush, Durham, pp. 25–31. For the connection with Wycliffe’s case, see M. L. Bush, ‘The Richmondshire uprising of October 1536 and the pilgrimage of grace’, Northern Hist., xxix (1993), 64–98, at pp. 74–5. 77 M. L. Bush, ‘Captain Poverty and the pilgrimage of grace’, Hist. Research, lxv (1992), 17–36. Hoyle follows suit (Pilgrimage, ch. 8).

The constitutional complaints articulated in this north-west region were declared in two muster proclamations of October 1536: one deplored the government’s contempt for the ‘laws and ordinances of our mother church’; the other complained that the ‘estate of poverty’ was oppressed by recent statutes passed ‘under the colour of parliament’ and specifically objected to new taxes on sacraments and foodstuffs.78 Moreover, in much of this region, the threat to rights was seen as stemming not simply from the government but also from local landlords. The rebels’ concern was a system of privileged tenure associated with border service and resting upon a customary claim to tenant right. In return for military obligations against the Scots, the peasants of the border shires expected certain favours: not only fiscal exemption but also lenient manorial dues and free commoning. In defence of the custom of tenant right, the rebels sought to fix the level of payments (gressums) that fell due upon a change of tenant or lord, and objected to recent enclosures restricting their rights of common. The rebels in the barony of Kendal adapted the pilgrim oath so that it included a commitment to be true to their ‘ancient, laudable customs’. The rebels of Cumberland produced a proclamation condemning landlords for ‘taking of gressums and improvements of rents and in pulling out poor men from their tenant rights’. In defence of tenant right, and more generally to protect ‘the faith of Christ, the church profit and the commonwealth’, the proclamation urged men to require their lords to seal ‘by bill indented’ a promise not to commit further ‘unlawful’ acts.79 Along the border of the East and North Ridings lay another strand of revolt with constitutional grievances. Its epicentre was at Malton; its chief captain was Sir Thomas Percy. Under examination in 1537 Percy listed six grievances, five of which – the rights of the church, the Statute of Uses, old usages and customs, gressum-taking and the rumoured taxes on christenings and ploughs – entailed a loss of rights and liberties.80 Yet another strand of revolt centred upon Beverley. It was the first in the north to assemble and muster. Its constitutional concerns were made evident on 10 October, two days after its initial outbreak, in a letter to the rebels of Lincolnshire informing them that the Beverley commons were sworn ‘to be true to God and our prince and his lawful acts and

78 Toller, pp. 47–50. 79 For the Kendalers’ adaptation of the oath, see T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/118 fo. 138v (L. & P., xii. i, no. 914(2)). For the Cumberland proclamation, see Hoyle and Winchester, pp. 128–9 (doc. 8). For similar sentiments in the barony of Westmorland, see Hoyle and Winchester, p. 127 (doc. 3); L. & P., xi, no. 1080. The problem relating to enclosures is identified in the Westmorland petition (L. & P., xi, no. 1080), reports by government officials on the West March (see L. & P., xii. i, no. 478 and L. & P., xii. ii, no. 548), article thirteen of the December petition (L. & P., xi, no. 1246) and enclosure riots in Jan. 1537. For a consideration of the enclosure problem, see Bush, Pilgrimage, pp. 311–14; and Winchester, Harvest of the Hills, chs. 2, 5. 80 L. & P., xii. i, no. 393.

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 66 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace demands’ and that their aim was to oppose ‘all them that be councillors, inventors and procurers utterly to undo both the church and the commonalty of the realm’. The rebels of this region also objected to the Act of Succession that had made Mary illegitimate and opposed the king’s assumed headship of the church. They saw Cromwell as a tyrant ruthlessly trampling on customs and laws. This was declared in certain rhymes collected together by Friar John Pickering and incorporated in a marching song which presented Cromwell as an Old Testament tyrant (Haman, chief minister of the king of Persia, who was discovered seeking to destroy all the Jews in the kingdom and consequently suffered execution) as well as the Turk. It exhorted the commons to uphold ‘the rights of the land’. The inhabitants of Beverley had a particular and personal grudge against Cromwell but the uprising had a constitutional foundation since it related to the way in which Cromwell had improperly sided with their lord of the manor in a recent star chamber case.81 Associated with the uprising in the West Riding wapentake of Craven was the Sawley ballad, a poem presented as the voice of the commons, although probably composed by a monk of Sawley abbey. In the poem tyranny was defined as a contravention of God’s law as set out in Deuteronomy and a robbery of the church that adversely affected the commons by reducing the service, charity and hospitality that the clergy had traditionally provided. The poem concluded that, since the government was in this manner responsible for a malfunctioning of the society of orders, the commons had no choice but to assemble to ‘make redress’ in order to liberate ‘all that is [in] thrall’. Finally, the important uprising centred upon Howden that, under Aske’s leadership, raised the westerly part of the East Riding and the easterly and southerly parts of the West Riding, was much concerned with maintaining the society of orders and deeply offended by the government’s contemptuous treatment of its principal parts: the royal family, the nobility, the clergy and the commonalty.82

The pilgrimage of grace, then, represented a defence of rights, as well as a protest against heresy, sacrilege and greed. Undoubtedly, the constitutional complaint acquired so much prominence because the pilgrims used it to buttress their objections to religious change and political exploitation. But this was not its sole purpose. Of importance in its own right, it voiced the fear that revered political and social values were under threat of extinction. In this respect, it throws light on the constitutional ideals of the time which centred upon a system of kingship

81 For the letter of 10 Oct., see T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/107 (L. & P., xi, no. 645). For the star chamber case, see Bush, Pilgrimage, pp. 50–3. For the succession concern, see Bush, Pilgrimage, p. 50. For Pickering’s song, see T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 1/118 fo. 292 (L. & P., xii. i, no. 1021(5)). 82 See Aske’s first two proclamations (L. & P., xi, no. 622; S.P. Hen. VIII, i. 455–7 (L. & P., xi, no. 705(2))); and his address to Lancaster Herald (L. & P., xi, no. 826).

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 67 hedged by devices for safeguarding the commonweal, notably the coronation oath, the council, parliamentary sanction and convocational consent. The failure of these devices, it was thought, justified correction by means of a rising of the commons. Integral to the proper working of the political system were both a freely elected parliament, equipped with a right of resistance to, and criticism of, the government so as to enable its members to protect the interests of the realm and to provide appropriate remedy, and a system of local government free from central interference and fully capable of impartially applying due process in the law. Ancient custom was felt to be as important as the law – especially in relation to the liberties of the church and to tenant right – but with the reservation that, in view of their vulnerability, such customs now needed the sanction of parliamentary statute. Society and state were linked by a tripartite hierarchy of gentlemen, clergy and commons, each estate or order equipped with its own complementary function and its own special relationship with the crown. As for the connection between church and state, it was felt that in spiritual matters the church needed to remain free of lay control so that it could operate according to the law of God. Holding these values, the pilgrims extolled Henry VII for maintaining the faith of Christ, for respecting the society of orders, for abiding by the law and for nurturing the commonweal. However, in view of the hostility created in the north by the interfering activities of Henry VII’s own ‘evil ministers’, Empson and Dudley, this appreciation of him must have developed latterly and in reaction to the rule of his son.83 Yet, it would be wrong to think that the whole of northern society subscribed to these ideals in exactly the same way. The social friction evident in the pilgrimage of grace between peasants and landlords, commons and gentlemen, and clerics and laymen suggests differences of belief both in relation to the notion of the society of orders and the issue of tenant right. Whereas gentlemen and clerics tended to stress the importance of obedience in regard to the obligations of the commons, the commons attached greater importance to the duties of the gentlemen to dispense a protective paternalism. Moreover, if the commons were to have their way on the redefinition of tenant right and tithes, the gentlemen and clergy stood to suffer a severe loss of revenue. Abiding by their obligations to pray and administer the sacraments, clerical pilgrims came into conflict with lay pilgrims, both gentlemen and commons, who expected them to show greater commitment to the militant act of rebellion. The constitutional complaint thus contained seeds of discord which eventually undermined the uprising’s solidarity and, by doing so, saved a beleaguered government.84

83 For the pilgrims’ view of Henry VII, see L. & P., xi, nos. 1059(ii), 1244. For Henry VII and the north, see R. R. Reid, The King’s Council in the North (1921), pp. 89–90. 84 See Bush, ‘Risings’, pp. 115–16, 119, 122–3.

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 68 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace

The pilgrims sought not only to restore but also to innovate. In this respect, their attitude to constitutional change was pragmatic and determined by self-interest. The pilgrimage of grace was far from being a simple reaction. The pilgrims were even prepared to tolerate certain enlargements in the royal authority. The king’s headship of the church was acceptable on condition that it did not totally exclude the papacy. His resumption of franchises only became an issue of contention because it deprived the ecclesiastical liberties of a right of sanctuary and the profits accruing to regalian rights.85 The pilgrims, moreover, were prepared to deprive the pope of the fees that stemmed from his right to consecrate bishops.86 As well as demanding the repeal of a number of statutes, the pilgrims required new legislation, principally to convert custom into something more secure, as the December petition made evident in relation to customary tenures (article nine), and the customary rights and liberties of the church and clergy (articles eighteen and nineteen).87 Some of this proposed legislation was expected simply to replicate custom; yet some of it was expected to enlarge the rights that custom had protected. This was especially true of the demands made by peasant pilgrims for agrarian reform. During the course of the uprising a number of innovations were proposed, such as the commutation of payments of rent and tithes from kind into money, the abolition of gressums, noutgeld and sergeant corn, and the conversion of arbitrary payments into fixed payments. In fact, wherever agrarian grievances were explicitly made – notably in Cumberland and Westmorland – the defence of custom was articulated in innovatory rather than reversionary terms.88 In addition, the pilgrims were capable of advocating new rights, such as the immunity of northerners from summons by subpoena to appear personally at Westminster. This claim had no basis in law or custom and represented merely an attempt to transmute a practice favoured by recent lord chancellors, especially Wolsey and Sir Thomas More, into a regional privilege.89 For these reasons it would be wrong to regard the pilgrim cause as totally predicated on the status quo ante. Conservatism was the pilgrims’ inevitable response to obnoxious innovations, but in the process of demanding the restoration of old rights, they were inclined to make claim to new ones. An appreciation of the pilgrims’ constitutional complaint questions the standard view of the pilgrimage of grace in several respects. First, it

85 Bush, Durham, pp. 28–31. 86 L. & P., xi, no. 1246, article 2. 87 L. & P., xi, no. 1246. 88 Bush, Pilgrimage, pp. 279, 310, 314–15, 336–40; Bush and Bownes, p. 292. On the other hand, the claim made by Thomas Denton that the custom of tenant right was ‘first erected’ in connection with the pilgrimage of grace (see Hoyle and Winchester, p. 125) overlooks its prior existence. For its earlier emergence, see Bush, ‘Tenant right’, pp. 166–7. 89 For recent changes in practice associated with Wolsey and More, see Guy, Court of Star Chamber, p. 41; Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp. 47–8; and Guy, Public Career of Sir Thomas More, p. 90.

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 69 confirms that the pilgrims’ objection was far from being narrowly focused or simply conservative. Second, it reveals that the uprising was more successful than is usually made out. The pilgrimage of grace is often regarded as a failure. If seen as essentially a religious revolt, this is indisputable: Henry VIII’s supremacy of the church was not undone; the Dissolution proceeded apace thanks to the uprising; and the onslaught upon saint worship that had started in 1536 with the Ten Articles, the First Royal Injunctions and the abrogation of holy days, continued relentlessly, so much so that, by the end of the reign, the main intercessory institutions – shrines, monasteries and chantries – had all been condemned to destruction, and the familiar intercessory practices of pilgrimages, obits and lights had all been banned. However, viewed as a constitutional revolt, the pilgrimage had become, by Henry VIII’s death, something of a success. After all, the tyrant fell in 1540, fulfilling article eight of the December petition, his act of attainder branding him, in compliance with pilgrim opinion, as ‘a man of very base and low degree’. In the same year the Act of Uses was undone by the Act of Wills, in accordance with article twenty.90 In 1542 the ban on crossbows and handguns, objected to in article ten, was repealed.91 In 1544, consonant with article three, Princess Mary was legitimized and readmitted to the succession by means of a statute that revised the Succession Act of 1536 so radically that any successor chosen by Henry VIII, in the absence of direct heirs, would require the approval of the realm in order to ascend the throne. In this respect, the government eventually responded to article sixteen.92 Moreover, immediately following the pilgrimage of grace the council of the north was revived, prominently manned by ex-pilgrims, with authority to hear northern equity cases in compliance with article twenty- three. By 1543 the council’s control of equity jurisdiction in the north was enabling it to resist successfully subpoenas issued by chancery summoning subjects from north of the Trent to appear personally at Westminster.93 What is more, the system of tenant right proposed in article nine, with its gressums fixed as a proportion of the rent, became common in the far north, the result of the crown’s declared support for it when the matter was raised by the pilgrimage of grace as well as in response to the warnings of disruption sent out to improving landlords by the agrarian movements associated with the same revolt.94 Furthermore, even though the government proceeded to collect the lay

90 32 Hen. VIII, c. 1. 91 33 Hen. VIII, c. 6. 92 35 Hen. VIII, c. 1. 93 Reid, pp. 274–5. 94 Bush, ‘Tenant right’, pp. 183 (n. 112), 186–7. The government became less keen on tenant right when tenants of the custom sought to scale down the free border service that they were obliged to provide, and turned very much against it after 1603 when the union of the crowns of England and Scotland removed the need for a border defence system (Bush, ‘Tenant right’, pp. 167–8, 187–8).

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 70 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace taxes objected to in article fourteen, they were never again granted in that form.95 Finally, the forty-day right of sanctuary that was abolished in 1529, and then deplored in article eighteen, was restored in 1540.96 And with Cromwell’s fall the offensive practice ended of delegating the monarch’s headship of the church to a layman. In dealing with the pilgrims the government was remarkably respectful of the general pardon originally requested in the October petition and eventually granted by royal proclamation on 9th December 1536. Its terms meant that, unless convicted of rebelling after the publication of the pardon, the pilgrims were entitled to go unpunished. This is what happened: the great majority escaped scot-free.97 It seems as if the charge of unconstitutional conduct emphatically made in the pilgrims’ two petitions had obliged the government to proceed with propriety in the delicate task of restoring order to the rebellious north. At the time, gentlemen and clerics questioned about their involvement in the rebellion presented a certain picture of it: one in which the commons rose up against the government, in the process taking captive large numbers of gentlemen and clerics who, having been forced to participate, worked as agents of the king to restore order, principally by persuading the rebellious commons to negotiate a settlement in Doncaster rather than to march on London for a military confrontation with the government. In other words, no matter the extent of their involvement in rebellion, they remained utterly loyal to the king. Recent studies of the pilgrimage of grace have been inclined, somewhat naively, to accept this exculpatory account, with R. W. Hoyle boldly formulating a thesis that takes it at its face value and assumes it to be true.98 Yet, it is rendered incredible partly by those gentlemen who appeared bent on presenting the uprising as a military threat and partly by the predominance of constitutional grievances. The latter suggests that the two petitions were not simply aimed at making the commons disarm and submit but were also a means by which disaffected gentlemen sought to bring pressure upon the government to change its policies. Finally, the constitutional complaint articulated by the pilgrimage of grace casts doubt on recent theories of the basic nature of the Tudor state. Reacting against the whig interpretation of history, and firmly repudiating the concept of a Tudor despotism, G. R. Elton claimed that the issue of constitutional rights had been grafted onto Tudor politics

95 M. L. Bush, ‘“Up for the commonweal”: the significance of tax grievances in the English rebellions of 1536’, Eng. Hist. Rev., cvi (1991), 299–318, at pp. 314–16. 96 32 Hen. VIII, c. 12. 97 See Bush and Bownes, ch. 10 and app. 4. Hoyle’s erroneous presentation of the pardon as no more than a promise of a pardon and one that only applied if individual suit was made after personal submission to the king (see Hoyle, Pilgrimage, p. 371) rests upon a misreading of the royal proclamation granting the pardon. 98 Hoyle, Pilgrimage, p. 422.

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace 71 anachronistically and that, at the time, such rights carried little political weight and had virtually no meaning. Accordingly, since the government abided by the law, the constitution was not in contention and political rights needed no defence other than against foreign powers. In Elton’s view, apart from its basic legislative function, parliament was an informative and advisory body, both a conciliar adjunct of the government and a medium for reporting subjects’ grievances. Rather than acting as an arena in which the rights of subjects were pitted against the royal prerogative, its proceedings were directed by shared values.99 Elton held a similar view of Tudor rebellion. His essay on the pilgrimage of grace took notice of its complaints against a loss of rights and liberties but only to dismiss them as lacking in authenticity and significance. According to him, the defeated court faction that masterminded the uprising managed to raise support in the north by exploiting grievances of a non-constitutional nature.100 Compared with the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, on the one hand, and the seventeenth century, on the other, politics in the sixteenth century certainly had a different ring to it: perhaps to be explained by the fading away of the dynasticism that had dominated opposition to the crown in the fifteenth century and the considerable patronage acquired by the Tudors from appropriated magnate and monastic estates. With the opposition to the crown in the fifteenth century led by an aspirant to the throne or a king maker, constitutional rights ceased to dominate the language of resistance; while the prospect of reward at the hands of the Tudor crown gave nobles and gentlemen little cause to bring them again to the fore. As dynasticism lost its grip on politics under the early Tudors, and as the plenitude of patronage shrank on the vine in the late sixteenth century, constitutional issues regained priority under the early Stuarts. Nonetheless, despite its political distinctiveness, the Tudor world was not unmoved by constitutional friction. To overlook a concern for lost or threatened rights is to ignore an important source of social division and political conflict within the Tudor state, stoked up by concerns about what was in keeping with the law; what was warranted by laudable custom; what was natural to the body politic. The pilgrimage of grace reveals a complex consciousness of ‘the true constitution’: one sustained not only by national concepts such as the society of orders, or by national institutions such as parliament, the common law, the church and the crown, but also by the provincial rights and local customs associated with the council of the north, the northern convocation, the northern liberties, the privileges of the border counties and northern tenant right. The

99 G. R. Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559–81 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. ix, 16–17, 23–5. See also G. R. Elton, ‘The rule of law in 16th-century England’, in G. R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government (4 vols., Cambridge, 1974), i, ch. 14. 100 Elton, ‘Politics’, pp. 41–52.

Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 207 (February 2007) © Institute of Historical Research 2006. 72 The Tudor polity and the pilgrimage of grace rebellion demonstrated that, founded upon this sense of rights, boundaries existed within both manor and state the infringement of which could cause deep offence. For this reason, an appreciation of constitutional rights formed an integral part of the early Tudor political system, as it actually operated at national, regional and local levels. The charge of tyranny served as a useful ideology of revolt in creating one coherent programme out of the broad range of grievances – religious, political, economic – that the pilgrims held. Nonetheless, since rights were seen as under threat from lords of the manor as well as from the government, the concern for the constitution also acted as a source of social division and therefore provided an unsound base upon which to construct a regional uprising. By undermining the rebellion’s solidarity, the concern for the constitution prepared for its defeat.